There's something that seems deeply contradictory to the very nature of Kaurismaki's stuff - cinema which at the same time invites the viewer to pay closer attention while shunning him with his trademark apathy and deadpan humour. His characters appear hard, untearful and unselfpitying, their sentiments hermetically sealed behind glacial walls of Finnish unfeeling, yet behind the expressionless mask burn desire and pathos, the truly human stuff. It is not about negation, though it may seem so at first.
Everything Kaurismaki worked towards in his career up to Ariel is brought to a glorious, brilliant blooming here. Composition, shot selection, framing and lighting, everything clicks together to form a cinematic language that threatens to burst at the seams with meaningful restraint. Restraint in which silence communicates. His mastering of the craft so much perfected that dialogue becomes largely irrelevant. There are few lines and they appear to be utilized as a stylistic manner, short and delivered with deadpan unaffection, more than exposition.
Indeed Ariel is a movie mostly told in a visual manner, built upon scene by scene, in a steady and hypnotic succession not concerned with reaching emotionally draining highs and lows as much as with building an unbreakable rhythm of its own. And so it does, to the point that a 69 minute movie appears to last much longer, without outstaying its welcome.
